Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Yellow Cab Pizza Company got its name from using a yellow-and-black color pattern which is commonly used by real yellow cabs in the USA.

The American taxi industry started in New York in 1912 with the incorporation of the Yellow Taxicab Company.

The Yellow Cab name came in 1915 in Chicago as the taxi company of the eventual founder of the Hertz Rent-a-Car business which still uses a yellow logo.

But this blog is not about taxi cabs, so off to Yellow Cab Pizza's Charlie Chan chicken pasta which I found too spicy and which my flickr friend aliceinthepoetsheartland explained was "meant to tease [the] palate into savoring the pizza, [a New York classic pepperoni pizza in my case], because tastes blend in the mouth".

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Manila Bay just behind the Cultural Center of the Philippines is a 30-minute bike ride from Revillen Street along Pasig Line in Sta. Ana, Manila. We used to swim there, diving from the rugged breakwater, until the day my solo false tooth fell into its murky depths, as I surfaced from a long dive for a gasp of that pungent salty air. My friend Wa, snatcher-par-excellence, tried diving for it, but he ain't no son of a Badjao or a pearl diver either.

My false tooth was courtesy of a wayward elbow from Andit of Almaguer during a class cutting mid-afternoon basketball game in a dusty street corner somewhere in Bambang. Its replacement, by the same dentist who made the first one and who know resides in Canada, got caught in a stream of puke ignited by a nasty hangover a night after Kuya Michael's installation as master of his Lodge last month. I wore that piece 24-hours for the last 22 years since the first sank in Manila Bay. I had a third one made but I thought it would not fit so I had it tucked somewhere as I tried living life with one front tooth missing.

But the story here is about San Marcelino Street which we have to cross on our way to and going back from Manila Bay. Early this year, I discovered the Church of San Vicente de Paul tucked along that street within the Adamson University area. That church's story started from a chapel built in 1883 for the parish of Paco which in 1912 was replaced by the present structure.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

What is now today the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the Philippines started as a clubhouse for German expatriates built in 1914. It was leased to the YMCA during World War I and in 1919 sold to an exclusive corporation of Masons called the Plaridel Temple Association. In 1937, the Plaridel Masonic Temple property was ceded to the Grand Lodge of the Philippines Islands who had it improved in 1938 during the incumbency of its Grandmaster --- Justice Jose Abad Santos. The Temple was occupied by Japanese soldiers during World War II and was burned down during the battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945. A new Temple was built by 1948.

The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons was declared by the National Historical Institute as a Historical Landmark in 1987. Unfortunately, the Temple was --- including priceless relics of Freemasonry in the Philippines --- again destroyed by fire in 2000. It was again reconstructed and the new building formally inaugurated in 2006.